Smoking ban hits Tom and Jerry

Scenes that appear to glamorise smoking are to be edited out of Tom and Jerry cartoons following complaints to Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog, that they are not appropriate to be shown to children.

The complaint, published yesterday by Ofcom, was about two cartoons - Texas Tom and Tennis Chumps - transmitted on Turner Broadcasting's children's channel, Boomerang. More than half (56%) of the channel's audience are aged four to 14.

In Texas Tom, Tom tries to impress a female cat by making a rollup cigarette while Tennis Chumps sees Tom's opponent in a match smoking a large cigar.

Turner said it would edit out any references in Tom and Jerry and all its 1,700 Hanna Barbera cartoons in which smoking appeared to be condoned.

But the broadcaster said editing out all smoking references might adversely affect the "value of the animation". Ofcom welcomed Turner's approach but said in future it would look at all such cases individually.